


Scent Memory

by fadagaski



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: Age Difference, Alien Biology, Angst, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Pon Farr, Telepathy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-13
Updated: 2011-08-13
Packaged: 2017-10-22 14:05:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/238840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fadagaski/pseuds/fadagaski
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gaila's on New Vulcan when Spock Prime enters into Pon Farr. She can help on a physical level, but emotionally is a whole different ballgame.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Scent Memory

**Author's Note:**

> A gift for my wifey on her birthday. And yes, she did request angst. Happy Birthday [rhaegal](http://rhaegal.livejournal.com/)!
> 
> Now with added [ART](http://lizardspots.livejournal.com/360414.html#cutid1). Thanks [lizardspots](http://lizardspots.livejournal.com/)!

New Vulcan, as the Terrans called it, was as hot as Orion Prime, but achingly dry. Gaila's skin puckered and shrivelled immediately on contact with the air. She licked her lips and tried not to pray for rain from the Mother.

Commander Spock had gone to greet his father with Nyota, and the rest of the landing party were busy distributing supplies to the waiting Vulcans, their voices over-loud in the natural tranquility. Gaila met Jim's eye and received a brief nod from him – permission. She left to find the Ambassador.

The _Farragut_ had exploded milliseconds after it dropped out of warp, but a few of the larger fragments maitained enough integrity to support pockets of life. Gaila had been in one of them. She dreamt about it sometimes; pinned against the bulkhead by a fallen beam, watching through an invisible forcefield as the wrath of the _Narada_ rained down on Vulcan. With Eridani behind her, the stars had never looked so bright, so chill and beautiful, as when Vulcan disintegrated into a black hole. In her dreams, she floated through space forever, spinning in an exotic dance with galaxies.

Ambassador Selek, as the older Spock was now known, had a home made from pre-fab Federation blocks, set in a neighbourhood of identical houses. It took Gaila ten minutes to walk there, by which time she felt like she was dying of thirst. As she reached the door, a female of about Gaila's age approached her at a hurried pace, for a Vulcan.

"The Ambassador does not wish to be disturbed. You would be wise to return to your crew," she said.

"The Ambassador is my crew," Gaila told her, for it was true. Minutes after the _Narada_ and _Enterprise_ and Vulcan had all disappeared, an escaping ship from the planet surface had spotted her lifesign and beamed her aboard. Not long after that, when all her scrapes had been sealed and she was down amongst the engines trying to coax more out of the ancient Warp drive, they picked up a distress signal from Delta Vega.

Keenser had been a little miracle, crawling into miniscule gaps to work magic on the faltering engines. Ambassador Spock – and really, anyone with a nose would be able to smell that key Spock signature – had torn the Comms station apart and rebuilt it from the ground up to broadcast at twice the designed distance, and he'd done it in less than an hour.

They had flown for two weeks like that, before they were rescued by a passing Andorian freighter; six young Vulcan survivors plus the Ambassador plus Gaila and Keenser and Ensign J'Qual of the _Hood_ , crowded onto a rickety pleasure cruiser meant to hold four beings at maximum. They'd coaxed every last scrap of life out of that ship, when the air scrubbers began to fail and the replicators malfunctioned, and through it they had bonded.

Keenser and J'Qual were both on the _Enterprise_. The six young Vulcans had enlisted in Starfleet, against the wishes of the Elders; Gaila spoke to them as often as she could. That left Spock.

The female didn't try to stop her from ringing the chime, and when there was no response, Gaila opened the door and entered. It was cool inside, shockingly so, with a kind of musty damp that was a relief to her skin but didn't smell right. Pre-fab houses were not designed for any one type of climate, and so they didn't suit any. The Vulcans were already busy rebuilding the inner city with structures of their own design, ones that maximised the advantages of Vulcan biology and desert living. The outer ring of settlements would be targeted next.

There was no sign of Spock in the area that humans might call a 'living room', though it functioned more as a reception in Vulcan culture. The kitchen area was similarly empty. As Gaila moved through the rooms – logically, she thought with a small smile – a distinct unease came over her. It was more than just the smell of damp walls. There was an undercurrent she had never sensed before. Inhaling deep, she let the scent roll down the back of her throat. It was almost, almost like lust.

"Gaila."

Spock stood in the doorway to his bedroom, arms tucked into the sleeves of his long robes. His face looked more drawn than it had in the emergency lights of their lifeboat, his grey hair lying flat and limp over the dome of his skull.

"Spock," Gaila said. "You're sick?"

"No." There was a rasp to his voice that suggested otherwise, but it was his scent that spoke volumes. As a rule, Vulcans didn't smell much of anything to an Orion nose – variations of sand and heat. Spock smelt of thick, cloying spices even beneath the pungent meditation incense that he burnt. It made Gaila ache inside.

"You're not right," she said instead. Spock didn't argue that, logical as it was. Gaila might have felt a small strum of pride at her use of logic in a discussion with a Vulcan, but it was overriden immediately by concern. "What's wrong? Can I help?"

"You shouldn't have come," Spock said. Gaila felt like she had been smacked in the face, but she didn't get angry. Much.

"I was coming to visit you in full health. Now I'm going to stay," she told him, jaw firm and fists clenched. Spock sighed, a deep gust of breath like McCoy loosed after a showdown with Jim, and it made the hair on Gaila's neck stand on end.

"There's nothing you can do to help me. You should return to your ship. I – I will be fine."

"I thought Vulcans didn't lie."

"We don't."

"Liar."

Spock smiled at her, a painful-looking twist of his lips that seemed to take a great deal of effort. Gaila felt sure of herself now, enough that she crossed the distance between them. "If you won't tell me what's wrong, am I allowed to guess?" she asked.

"If you must," Spock said. His tone acknowledged that he wouldn't be able to stop her. They had reached that understanding on the lifeboat.

"Okay. Well, it's not something that has an easy cure, or you'd be cured already." Spock nodded once. "It's something that might reveal to too many people who you really are." Again, a nod. "It's something which you've had before." At Spock's surprised look, she elaborated: "You don't seem confused or upset. I mean, for a Vulcan."

"Very logical deductions," Spock said, which was high praise indeed. Now that she was standing much closer, Gaila took another deep breath, felt the air fluttering against the scent organ at the back of her throat.

"I've often wondered if Vulcans have a sex drive," she said, apropos of nothing, and knew she had hit the nail on the head when the tension sagged from Spock's shoulders. "I mean, sex and reproduction are so illogical. The time could be better spent researching or whatever, and there are other ways of making babies now. But it wasn't always like that, was it? In ancient times, the survival of your race relied on good old fashioned fucking." Spock didn't flinch at the profanity, or the direct gaze of her eyes. "The Vulcans are still here, still logical, and – still fucking. Am I right?"

There was a beat of silence, and then Spock said: "We call it Pon Farr."

"Ah." Gaila nodded to the reception room with its semi-circle of chairs, and Spock shuffled past her. She caught a waft of decay from him, rotting flowers and mildew and cloying spice.

"We do not speak of Pon Farr to anyone," Spock said, when he was perched on the edge of his chair. Gaila sat next to him. "Pon Farr – it is deeply personal." As an Orion, Gaila had found it inconceivable that a culture could exist where sex was taboo, until she had moved to Earth. Now she understood that the Orions were more unusual about such things.

"How do you deal with it?" she asked.

"Pon Farr is caused by a chemical inbalance in the brain," he said, speaking with a stiltedness that sat at odds with his usual ease, "which can be corrected by one of three methods. Taking a mate is the most obvious and logical as it satisfies all the requirements of Pon Farr. Then there is the challenge; this requires a certain set of circumstances and is undesirable as it results in at least one death. Lastly there is meditation."

"Is that what you've been doing?"

"It is. Meditation is also undesirable as it, too, can result in death, or great destruction."

"But you've been doing it anyway," Gaila pointed out. Spock smiled again, without humour.

"I have already taken a mate in my lifetime. I have no desire to take another. Therefore, meditation is the only option left open to me." Silence descended while Gaila chewed over these new facts, variables in the great equation that was Spock.

"It was Jim, wasn't it?" she asked, after a moment. Spock flinched – minutely, but telling in a Vulcan – and his eyes were wide when they met hers. "The mate of your life. It was the Jim from your universe." She watched as he swallowed with some difficulty.

"Yes," he said. She knew, then, that Jim was dead in that other place, and probably had been for some time. "I have been through three Pon Farr cycles without Jim, using meditation. It should be the same here."

"But Jim is alive here," Gaila said. "Jim's alive and on this planet, and you – you can't go to him. You won't let yourself ask." Spock's eyes slid closed. His mouth curled downwards, and when Gaila breathed in he smelt a little of rain off the bay.

Very gently, she laid a hand over his where it rested on his knee. His skin was thin and fragile and so very warm. "Vulcans are immune to my pheremones. That's why I was so friendly with the Commander at the Academy. But, if you are willing, I would share Pon Farr with you." The words were clumsy in Standard, which could never hope to match Orion for the depth of vocabulary surrounding lust and sex and kinship, but at least it was better than Vulcan.

"Gaila," Spock murmured. "I don't want another mate."

"It's just sex," Gaila argued. "I'm an Orion. Sex is my favourite hobby."

"It won't be the same without Jim." But his hand turned against hers until they were palm to palm. Gaila shifted closer.

"Let me help you," she murmured in his ear. Her fingers brushed over his, and she smelt the hot spark of lust that coursed through him, dark like chocolate. That was an interesting erogenous zone, and shed a whole new light on Vulcan engineers. Keeping a light grip on his hand, Gaila stood. "Come with me," she said, lowly, and tugged Spock to his feet.

The bedroom was filled with the herby incense. With her free hand, Gaila rubbed a sneeze out of her nose before turning to face Spock. His eyes were half-lidded, and he looked diminished in his layers of clothing and the muted light. Gaila pressed her palm to his weathered cheek. "I don't want anything more than you, here, with me," she said. Spock nodded again.

Despite her history, Gaila had never slept with a Vulcan before, and she was nervous like she hadn't been about sex for years. At the back of her mind she reviewed every sordid detail Nyota had ever confided (or murmured in her sleep), because she had to get this right for Spock. Her pleasure would come secondary, for the first time since she fled to Federation space.

"Is there anything I should know up front?" she asked, making sure to look Spock directly in the eye. "Anything I shouldn't say or do or touch?"

Spock thought for a moment. "There is nothing that comes to mind. And you? I am aware of certain difficulties in your past ..." Gaila waved a hand, cutting him off.

"Ancient history as far as I'm concerned," she said.

"That is most admirable." Gaila beamed at him, before letting her smile turn sultry. She trailed her fingers up Spock's clothed arms to his shoulders.

"Perhaps we should make ourselves comfortable on the bed?" She watched him watch her as she ran her thumb down the pressure seal of her uniform. It parted to reveal the vibrant green skin of her neck and chest. Spock followed the trail of her fingers with his eyes, before glancing away. He took a shaky breath. For a heart-stopping moment, Gaila thought he would halt her. He would choose whatever madness this mating heat brought on in Vulcans that could cause 'death and destruction'. She couldn't – she couldn't let him do that to himself.

With no excessive shimmying, Gaila stripped herself of her uniform until she was stood before Spock in just her underwear and a pair of Nyota's boots Gaila had liberated. Spock's head was turned to the side, but he was looking at her from the corner of his eyes. She grabbed his hand, and stroked his fingers as she had done before. There – the hot prickle of lust thrumming through his scent. "Touch me," she ordered, and deliberately placed his hand on her.

"Gaila," he murmured. He stroked over the smooth flesh of her abdomen, sending shivers of heat down through her belly. "Pon Farr is more than just the need to reproduce. It is equally a psychological drive to lose control of one's emotions, and to share that loss with a mate through a mental bond. Such things are shameful to Vulcans. We don't speak of them at all, if it can be helped."

"Is it a permanent bond?" Gaila asked, zeroing in on the pertinent warning there. It went without saying that she would exercise discretion.

"It does not need to be," Spock said. Gaila nodded, smiling softly at him.

"Then don't worry." She stepped forward into his personal space, cradling his cheek again with her palm. "Whatever you need, I'm here. And I'll still respect you in the morning." It was something Jim had said a few times to her – usually whilst she was tying him up – that made her laugh. She was relieved when Spock relaxed, even smiling a little. Perhaps his Jim had said something similar.

Gaila took the opportunity to brush her lips over Spock's in the barest caress. Spock's breath stuttered, that dark cocoa smell coming back stronger than before. Gaila deepened the kiss, slanting her head for a better angle and flicking her tongue very gently against Spock's lower lip.

He was still taut like a harp string. "Relax," she whispered against his mouth, and amazingly he did. His tongue was slick and hot against hers when they met in the first tentative touch. His fingers danced over her ribs up to the seam of her bra and back down again. Gaila held on at his shoulders, bunching the material in her fists.

She kissed him for a long moment, slow and boiling, until she could smell he was totally in her thrall. Then she caught his hand and moved it up to her face, the way she had seen only once when Nyota thought Gaila was asleep when the Commander brought her home. Spock pulled back. His lips were shiny, his eyes dark like fever. Gaila smiled at him and placed her own hand on the side of his face, insensitive to the true psi points but making a rough approximation.

"For the bond, right?" she asked. Spock was almost – almost – gaping, and Gaila was equally flattered and proud that his breath was laboured from just their kiss.

"Have you ever been telepathically linked?" Spock asked.

"A Betazoid tried once, but it didn't really work." It had been like having a small stone in her shoe: a bit irritating but not too hard to ignore. They hadn't tried intimacy again after that.

"This will feel a great deal different." Spock frowned, deepening the wrinkles framing his eyes. He seemed to be struggling for words.

"It's okay. I get it," Gaila said, smiling again. "I'm consenting to this. All of this. Whatever happens. Okay? Just let go." Because even if he could describe the process of bonding, Gaila as a non-telepath didn't have the capacity to understand it in the abstract. Like Jim and Amanda Grayson before her, Gaila would have to rely on blind faith in her Vulcan partner.

She wasn't the least bit doubtful.

"My mind to your mind. My thoughts to your thoughts ..."

It didn't feel like anything at first. Gaila kept her eyes open, watching the furrowed concentration on Spock's face. She would be heartbroken if this didn't work after he had given himself over to her. Then she felt a tickle somewhere in the back of her head, like a voice calling her name across a vast distance. She frowned and tried to focus more fully on the summons. It called again, a little stronger. Gaila closed her eyes.

Spock was right there, in her mind, waiting. He smelt of liquid chocolate and the barest trace of Jim's sandalwood scent. Gaila couldn't orientate herself in this mental space, she didn't have the talent or training to structure her thoughts like Spock could. Flailing in and out of focus, almost like passing out, she struggled to sense where her boundaries intersected with Spock. She tried to fill her mind with thoughts of trust and warmth and intimacy. _Let go_ , she directed at him.

A wave of Spock crashed over her, drowing Gaila in a flood of his wants and needs. She felt her knees buckle and she collapsed backwards on the bed, pulling Spock's body down with her. It was a totally alien experience to slip into and out of her body. In one breath she was wriggling out of her underwear; in the next, she was surrounded in Spock's lust. Then he was mouthing at her nipple through the lace of her bra. Then images of Jim – Jim with brown eyes, but still Jim – filled her mind.

Gaila's senses were overloaded with data from Spock: the play of light on Jim's hair in the morning, the feel of Jim's mouth on his (her?) cock, the days they spent in bed every Pon Farr just wallowing in each other, the look in Jim's blue eyes when she (he?) said "I love you", the smell of sex in the shower and on the beach and in a hotel room and at the back of a lecture hall.

Spock was naked now and Gaila ran her hands over his back, the texture oddly rough against her palms. He had two fingers inside her, thumb circling her clit, and she could feel exactly how sensitive his hands were, how much touching her like this sent echoes through his cock. She wrapped her legs around his waist and pulled his hips down to hers.

"Now," she said, and _Now_ , she thought, and he entered her in one smooth stroke. At the same time, his thoughts spun back to Jim, dragging her with him, to memories of entering Jim over and over and over, and Gaila added her own memories of entering Jim over and over and over.

The dark chocolate smell coated everything as loud as her gasps of pleasure, but beneath that was the smell of bay rain again, and storms rolling across Iowan plains, and sandalwood and seasalt and pale flowers on an empty grave.

When Spock came, it felt like Gaila was coming too, hot spurts from her cock deep inside herself. Then she did come in rolling pulses that rippled through Spock as well, an orgasmic circuit that didn't smell of anything at all. Spock's mind went white within her head, and for a long moment she floated in the light of it, the silent stillness, wondering if he had whited out her thoughts too.

Gaila carded her hand through his course grey hair and kept him close with her legs when he roused back to full awareness. His body was so thin, so slight – not frail, in the way humans got in old age, but he was old and tired and grief-sick. She was glad to cradle him for just a little longer.

Spock's hand moved away from her face, but he was still there in her head. Gaila thought about speaking, asking any one of a hundred questions, but as soon as she thought them the answers appeared. Spock's body didn't fall to the grip of Pon Farr like it used to in youth. It wouldn't take much acrobatic sex to restore him to balance.

"Again?" she asked, feeling the stir in her-or-his loins and the flash of chocolate heat. She rolled her hips experimentally and was rewarded with a mild groan in her ear.

But Spock was tired, having fought the pull of Pon Farr for days before Gaila arrived. She sensed the weariness in her own bones. Without thought she rolled them over so that Spock was on his back and she was knelt over his thighs, his cock rapidly hardening in her. She unclasped her bra, tossing it onto the floor so her breasts could hang free. The telepathic bond was rising up again to suck her under, and she let it, setting her body on autopilot.

It took a good deal longer for them both to come the second time. Gaila's abs and thighs ached from the workout, and two green spots had appeared on Spock's cheekbones that lent him a flush of youth. In unison they thought of Jim, sharing memories of him naked in the shower or reading a PADD (that was Gaila's) or fingering himself open (that was Spock's). Gaila remembered seeing Jim for the first time after the _Narada_ , the way he smelt of sour antiseptic and chillies. Spock showed her Jim's plaque at Memorial Square.

He might have been crying, or it might have been Gaila. She was bent over him, their faces so close it was impossible to tell.

Spock slipped away from her mind again, leaving her adrift and without form. She guessed he would be asleep for a while. He smelt better, at least, more balanced: less of chocolate, more of pale desert flowers.

She wasn't Jim. She could never replace Jim, nor would she want to. But at least Spock could get by. It was enough to share a lifetime with someone, even if it was their lifetime and not yours.


End file.
